Mission: Earth "Disaster" (32 page)

She told him that she loved him, in an anxious voice. His hint about the National Security Agency and the inference he was about to do something had her worried.

He hung up and went to his room and changed his clothes. He put on a black summer-weight suit, black engineer boots and black engineer gloves.

He packed a shoulder-strap bag with explosives and other items. He tied the collapsed spacetrooper sled to it.

He picked up the cat's satchel, checked its items and put the cat in it.

Balmor escorted him down to the car and handed him a leather lunch case overfull with sandwiches, hot coffee and milk. "An army crawls on its stomach, sir. I don't think you've eaten since you got off the plane."

"Thanks, Balmor. The fellow who said war is hell didn't have you for a butler."

He rolled downtown in the Rolls Royce, sharing sandwiches with the cat.

They stopped half a block from the Empire State Building. Heller thanked the chauffeur and told him to go home.

He shifted the two satchels to comfortable positions on his shoulders and strode along, carrying the lunch box.

He went in by another entrance than the one he had used last time. It also had police and they eyed him. He took an elevator to the floor above his own. He walked along until he was above the Maysabongo Legation. He looked around to make sure there were no night cleaners in sight.

Expertly he opened the lock of an office door, went in and closed it behind him. He crossed it and opened a window. He verified that he was right. He got out a spaceship safety line and hooked its quick release to a pipe. Heller looked far down at the distant street. Two cop cars were standing there. A swirl of mist went by bis window, such was the altitude of it. He looked up: the sky was pale black above.

He swung out and dropped down.

He came opposite the legation window. It was all dark inside.: He thumped on the glass quietly.

Suddenly there was Izzy's face!

Heller made a gesture of opening the window. Izzy came out of his shock. He fumblingly obeyed. Heller slid in. He gave the safety line a twitch and it fell into his hand. He closed the window.

A candle was being lit.

"Don't say, 'Jet, how did you get here?'" said Heller. "It will very shortly be dawn and we haven't got much time."

"Mr. Jet, how did you get here?" said Izzy, eyes round as saucers behind his horned-rimmed glasses.

In the candlelight, Bang-Bang was grinning ear to ear. Delbert John Rockecenter II was getting off a desk, popeyed.

"What's going on?" said Heller. "Did you execute the options or what?"

"Oh," said Izzy. "It is a dreadful thing. Miss Simmons has got all the refineries in the world shut down. Maysabongo exercised the options to buy all the oil reserves."

"Couldn't you pay for them?" said Heller.

"Oh, yes," said Izzy. "That was easy. We had the cash. Maysabongo controls every drop of crude oil in the tanks and on board ships. That's why they're going to declare war!"

"But didn't you make good the options to sell all the oil stock in the world? Didn't it go down?"

"Oh, it went down! It's worth almost nothing."

"Well, all right," said Heller. "You must have made billions!"

"I should say so," said Izzy. "That's another trouble. Tharti more cash than there is available and it will break the American banking system. They don't have 189 billion in their tills!"

"Well, didn't you exercise the options to buy in all the oil-company stock for a dollar?"

"Mr. Jet," said Izzy, "I got to tell you something. The options at the brokers will expire Monday noon. We can't get out of here. We can't phone. We can't send messengers. We're living on Maysabongo samples of coconut oil. We can't reach the brokers or the bank. We haven't exercised either the sell options or the buy options!"

"It's Rockecenter," said Bang-Bang. "He got Faustino to order the New York City Police to bottle up this place."

"He got the president of the United States to declare mobilization," said Izzy. "Sunday evening, the Swillerberger Conference of International Financiers is meeting in Philadelphia. They're ordering the president and Congress to declare war on Maysabongo Monday morning. They'll take back the oil as enemy property and we'll be out our money. They'll sell it back to Rockecenter for pennies and he'll make billions."

"But what if we owned all the shares?" said Heller.

"The money we make with the sell options will do us no good," said Izzy. "They'll keep the banking system intact by saying we're enemy-connected people and seizing all our funds. Even if we execute our buy options, all those shares will be seized and the oil companies will be sold to Rockecenter for nothing. He'll come out of this far more rich and powerful than he ever was before."

"And us guys," said Bang-Bang, "will wind up in the jailhouse as enemy agents."

"And," Izzy continued, "although I filed their 13D form with Securities and Exchange Commission, saying we were going to acquire more than 5 percent of a lot of oil companies, they claim they never saw the paper and we'll be facing Federal warrants. Oy, Mr. Jet, I have never seen such trouble!"

"Well, I can solve part of it," said Heller. "Have a sandwich and some hot coffee." And he hefted the lunch case onto a desk.

"Oy, Mr. Jet. I wish I had your nerve!" said Izzy. "My ulcers are killing me."

"What are you doing here?" said Heller to Delbert John Rockecenter II.

"I'm a conscientious defector," said Twoey. "Tuesday a bunch of men with guns shot the land yacht all to pieces. Me and the staff were down at the barns feeding pigs. They set fire to the barns, too, and shot a lot of helpless swine. We barely got away with our lives. I had just got here when they closed this place down. Let me tell you, Jerome, this being a Rockecenter son is dangerous. I think I better warn you: they don't even respect pigs! All I did was phone our father and ask him to do a commercial telling people not to eat ham...."

"You phoned him?" said Heller.

"Yeah, Miss Joy left the number in the land yacht. I talk good English now and everything. There wasn't any reason for him to blow up. Any self-respecting boar treats his kids better."

"Mr. Jet," said Izzy. "That's another thing. Bleedum, our attorney, was looking up the Rockecenter wills, and did you know that there's a ten-billion-dollar trust standing by if Rockecenter has a son? The boy would get it when he was eighteen and up to then Delbert Senior is the trustee. I don't think it's safe for either you or Twoey to be seen around. If you can get us out of here, I've got airline tickets for Brazil."

"Eat your sandwiches," said Heller. "The only flying that's going to be done right now is by me."

They had been pouring out hot coffee for themselves but they stopped and watched what Heller was doing.

Jet was assembling the spacetrooper sled. Its antigravity lifts hummed as he checked them. He verified the connections and drive power with the meter on one of its rods.

"You didn't see this," he said.

He gave the cat satchel and the other bag a hitch to get them around toward his back. He laid the two poles at the sled front on the windowsill. He opened the window and lay on the sled, belly down.

The three stared at him in astonishment.

"You guys just sit tight and stay alive," said Jet. "I'm going to see what I can do to rescue you. Bye-bye."

He wrapped his hand around the button control at the front of the right-hand pole.

The sled soared out the window and into the mist and night.

Heller launched himself into the first gray of the dawn. Unseen, flying at a thousand feet like a javelin through the whistling air, he headed southwest. The blackness and the lights of the Hudson lay below. A very faint pink strand of cloud heralded the eastern sun.

Quite unlike him, his mind was filled with misgivings and doubt. But like a gambler who stakes all on one last throw, he had to take the chance.

As he flew, he told himself his prospects did not look good. His plan was good enough, providing he could surmount one huge obstacle.

He knew he had to fight a war. It was not the war which Congress would declare on Monday. Heller's war had to be over and done with, victorious, in just slightly more than forty-eight hours.

He didn't have any troops. Rockecenter obviously owned the army and told it what to do, and additionally Heller knew that the War Department was not likely to approve the battle he must fight. And win. He knew where the troops were to be had but it was a very iffy thing: Babe Corleone!

Half a year before, due to the false publicity of J. Walter Madison, Babe Corleone had believed him to be a turncoat and traitor and a supporter of Faustino "The Noose" Narcotici. She thought Faustino had paid him to throw a race.

Faustino styled himself the capo di tutti capi. But Babe Corleone, who had guided the Corleone family since the death of her aged husband, "Holy Joe," despised drugs and would not deal with the Faustino mob.

She had regarded Heller as a son until the fatal rift. He wondered if he were not sticking his head into a hornet's nest now even thinking of approaching her. The wrath of the six-foot-six, statuesque, ex-Roxy chorus girl was legendary, her thirst for vengeance proverbial. When he had last seen her she had washed her hands of him and, in sackcloth and ashes, had ordered him to get out. It had made him very sad, for he was fond of Babe. He had obeyed and had not gone near her since.

But she had soldati and, in his extremity, Heller thought just possibly he might be listened to. be was taking a long chance.

He skirted along the New Jersey shore of the Hudson, whistling lower now, barely above the height of cranes along the wharves. If defense radar picked him up they would think he was a patrol helicopter, common on this run.

The sky was growing pinker. By its light ahead he saw Bayonne. The New Jersey Turnpike, oddly empty of cars, unreeled below. Newark Bay, a pool of growing crimson now, came to view. He banked along the western edge of Bayonne Park. He spotted Babe's high-rise. She lived in the whole top floor. It was defended like a fort, but nobody expected an approach from the roof.

Heller pressed the controls and the wind went out of his hair. He settled to a gentle, silent landing on the flat asphalt top.

It was quite light now. Daylight saving time made it 6:35. The sun would be completely over the horizon in five minutes. He had not been too soon. But what an awful hour to make a call!

He rapidly folded up the spacetrooper sled. He went to the access door, pressed his ear to it and listened. No sounds. He got out a picklock and opened the door.

Silently, he crept down the steps. He had to be very careful: He was likely to be shot, no matter who he was, coming in this way. But he could not take any chance by using the front door. It would, he thought, just get slammed in his face. He had to have a chance to state his offer. .

A man was sitting in a chair by the elevator! Geovani! Babe's bodyguard!

He had his back to Heller. He was dozing. Heller did not want him to draw. Jet made a pistol out of his index finger and put it into the middle of Geovani's back. "Freeze," he said, "it's a friend."

Geovani whirled so fast he almost snapped his neck off. He stared. "Sacro scimmie!" he said. "Sacred monkeys, it's the kid! Mother of God! You almost scared me to death! Where... ? How ... ?" He was looking wildly around, unable to comprehend how Heller had gotten in.

Heller put down the spacetrooper sled and took off his satchels and hung them on it. He unbuttoned his jacket and opened it. "See, I'm not heeled. Not even a knife. I've got to talk to Babe."

Geovani looked uncertain and bewildered.

A call came from behind the closed door at the end of the hall. "I hear voices. Who is there?"

The hall door opened. Babe Corleone, holding a lingerie robe about her, looked out. She had a Heckler and Koch .45 in her other hand.

She peered. "Jerome? It can't be. Jerome, is that really you?"

And then she dropped her pistol on the floor and bowed her head and began to cry. She swabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She said, brokenly, "Oh, Jerome, I am ... I am so glad you got over being mad and came to me."

Heller had advanced up the hall to her. "Mad at you? I thought you were mad at ME!"

"Oh, I don't blame you for walking out," wept Babe. "I was so awful nasty. I didn't understand you were just setting up Faustino by getting him to confess he got you to throw the race. And then when I saw how it weakened him . .."

"Weakened him?" said Heller.

"Ruined him in the gambling racket. He had to pay back all the bets and nobody would trust him anymore. The numbers rackets and everything came over to us. I don't blame you for not forgiving me and moving out and never calling again. It was just a straight Italian double-cross and I didn't understand. I have been such a stupid mother. Can you ever forgive me?"

"I didn't call because I thought you were still mad. I was never angry with you, even once," said Heller.

She suddenly threw her arms around him. "You DO forgive me then! Oh, Jerome, I've missed you so!" She put her head down on his shoulder and cried without restraint, gripping him convulsively.

After a time they sat down upon the couch but Babe still held his hand, gazing at him with a glad smile that every now and then again dissolved into tears.

Finally she turned and yelled, "Geovani, don't stand around like a (bleeped) fool. Get Gregorio up and tell the (bleepard) to look alive and get Jerome some milk and cookies! And then get him some breakfast!" She turned to Jet. "You look starved. Tired, too. Nobody has been looking after you."

"I've been pretty busy," said Heller. "Been up without sleep for quite a while. How are things going with the family?"